Configuring Local Yum Server on RHEL 5.x (Part-2)

All software on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux system is divided into RPM packages which can install, upgrade, or remove. In my previous tutorial I have described that how to use yum as a command line tools for downloading and installing packages. But it is also possible to do all this things using package manager, actually a package manager is graphical tools for Installing/Removing Packages, which is similar to the Add/Remove program of windows. But from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 it is difficult to install/remove packages using package manager due to its dependencies problem. To install/remove packages using package manager by solving dependencies problem follow the following steps to enable the package manager.

Server Side Configuration

You can configure package manager to use in local machine or remote machine on your network. You can also do this using internet that you will show on my next tutorial. If you have more than one computer which are running Linux operating system first configure a server system where all the repositories will store then install and configure httpd/vsftpd services for client machine accessing, that I have already been discussed in my previous tutorial (Part-1).

Step-1: Mount the RHEL5 DVD.

Insert the RHEL5 DVD into your DVD-ROM and create a directory under the /mnt/ directory named rhel5 then mount the DVD into /mnt/rhel5/ directory.

Now go to the /home/rhel5/ directory and create repodata file for DVD source.

[root@yumsrv ~]# cd /home/rhel5/[root@yumsrv rhel5]# createrepo .

Step-5: Create an ISO file for this DVD source.

[root@yumsrv ~]# mkisofs –o /opt/RHEL5.iso –l –r /home/rhel5/

Step-6: Create a mount point directory for the ISO file.

Create a directory into /var/www/html/ named “rhel5” which will act as a mount point directory for this ISO. If you are wish to provide http services for client accessing then it will be the default directory for http services, but if you are using ftp services for client accessing then the default directory will be /var/ftp/pub, for ftp services put your all the DVD resources in this directory. Otherwise if you are wish to use it only local machine then choose any location in your local machine.

Now it’s time to testing that our package manager is working properly by type system-config-packages into your terminal window if everything is ok then it will show the package manager as like below. You can also start the application; go to Applications(the main menu on the panel) → Add/Remove Software.

[root@yumsrv ~]# system-config-packages

Now select a category from left window suchas Server and select the packages from right panel that you want to install then click Apply. It will install the core packages and also the related dependent packages. This way you can solve the dependencies installation problem.

Prepare Server for Client machine:

If you want to provide client machine to download & install the packages via package manager, then you will have to enable following services below on your Server Machine. In this case I am describing both of them, but in real world you can configure one of them.

Author Info

Myself is a Computer Network Specialist. Working in a training center (name - Acme IT) in Bangladesh. Basically most of the tutorial I have written here is created for my students. Happy to know if it become useful for visitors. You can find me at Facebook